UC Riverside professor Jorge Leal dives into Rock en Español history in podcast

When Jorge Leal entered academia, he had no intention of studying the music that meant so much to him.

“That’s the last thing I wanted to do,” the Pacoima resident says on a recent video call. “I was done with music.”

Music, however, had other ideas for him. Now an assistant professor of history at UC Riverside, Leal is also the host of the summer podcast series, “The Discursive Power of Rock en Español and the Desire for Democracy,” which looks at the Latin American and local Rock Angelino bands that emerged at the end of the 20th century and left a legacy that can be felt amongst young music fans today.

The podcast includes contributions from professors Citlali Sosa-Riddell of CSU San Marcos and José Anguiano from Cal State Los Angeles, LAUSD music teacher José Vergara as well as students and recent graduates from UC Riverside and Pierce College.

Leal himself was a participant in Los Angeles’ Rock en Español scene.

“Someone once called me a Rock en Español activist,” he recalls on a recent video call. “I was just at every show and I liked being at every show.”

He also produced Southern California events in the 1990s and 2000s and worked as a journalist. Later on, while researching the late 20th-century history of Los Angeles and Southern California, he saw how deeply it connected with Rock en Español, through the music itself as well as with the events, media and fan communities that sprung up around it.

In the podcast’s first episode, which aired in late June, Leal takes listeners into the histories of Argentina, Chile and Mexico during the 1980s, giving context to the work of some of the best-known artists of the era, like Soda Stereo from Argentina, Los Prisioneros from Chile and Caifanes from Mexico.

“Historically, we see how they’re coming together,” says Leal of these bands made music that would resonate with listeners during trying times. “Some of the songs were not necessarily political,” he explains, “but they were songs that people took on as anthems, hymns, of protest.”

That the music was part of a counterculture wasn’t lost on listeners at the time, Leal notes. “In the case of Chile and Argentina, maybe they couldn’t explicitly denounce the dictatorships, but in coded ways, they were doing so and people knew that was going on,” he explains. “That’s the effort of the podcast, to be able to present this larger historic landscape and put this music in that context.”

The context is important, given the current interest in Rock en Español amongst people who were born well after the 1980s. “It’s more like an intergenerational legacy,” he explains, noting that it’s music that young fans often have in common with their parents and other older relatives.

In fact, the soundtrack for the podcast includes cover versions of well-known songs performed by the students of Miramonte Elementary in South Los Angeles.

José Vergara, who teaches modern band at Miramonte Elementary, recalls when one of his fourth-grade students asked if they could learn to play “Viento,” from the band Caifanes. “That’s the music I grew up listening to and the bands that really influenced me,” he says.

The students did learn “Viento,” as well as songs from Soda Stereo, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and Café Tacvba for their spring concert. These recordings were used in the podcast.

Vergara says that, even if his students don’t immediately recognize the name of a band or the title of a song, they often know it when they hear it. “They’re like ‘Oh, yeah, I heard that at a party.”

As for Leal’s students, they’re typically between 18 and 20 years old, and many of these songs have become part of their personal soundtracks.

“They’re like, ‘I listen to it with my parents but also at the clubs,’” he says, mentioning the roving party Klub Nocturno, known for its popular Rock en Español-centric Rockero Night. One student even hipped him to a cover of Los Prisioneros’ hit “Tren al Sur” performed by L.A.-based teen punk band The Linda Lindas. The song will be the subject of an upcoming episode of the podcast.

“What I find interesting is how newer generations, especially in the U.S., have created a different meaning out of it,” Leal says of “Tren al Sur.” The song describes a trip to the southern part of Chile by train and its refrain includes a line that people will often sing loudly when it plays at clubs today, “Y no me digas pobre.”

“That, at the moment, was just a class comment. Going on the train to the south of Chile meant that you were poor,” Leal explains. “But for people in the U.S., it has become an immigrant anthem. It’s like going back home – ‘don’t tell me I’m poor’ – people have transformed the meaning of the song.”

Later in the series, students will lend their perspective on songs like “Tren al Sur.”

“The songs that come out of this music genre take on new meanings in generations after, both on the dance floor but also in the lyrical sense,” says Leal.

Which makes sense. After all, the meaning of songs is never static. “It’s very elastic,” Leal says, “and we really want to explore that with the lens of the historian, but also the wonder of how new generations make sense of it at this point.”

New episodes of “The Discursive Power of Rock en Español and the Desire for Democracy” go live Wednesday mornings on Spotify and other major podcast platforms.